I live in the Midwest but I grew up on the East Coast. I spent my summers at the Jersey shore. (No, not that one.) I know a thing or two about hurricanes. Isaac is expected to make landfall later today in the New Orleans area almost seven years to the day when Katrina made landfall. There are some notable differences between the two storm systems and the New York Times has attempted to elucidate those important distinctions in this graphic.
Curiosity is not the only rover on Mars, eight years after a 90-day mission, we still have Opportunity rolling around. The Los Angeles Times published this graphic detailing the exploration conducted by Opportunity. This is a map of Opportunity’s section of Mars.
Credit for the piece goes to Julie Sheer, Lorena Iñiguez, Raoul Rañoa, and Anthony Pesce.
If you haven’t heard, we share a border with Mexico. And we patrol it. And the Washington Post published a graphic looking at the patrolling of the US–Mexican border.
Credit for the piece goes to Anup Kaphle and Bill Webster.
Today’s post comes via a co-worker of mine and is from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. The infographic is of the long-running image type, but in this case is neatly sliced into digestible morsels of tasty infographic-ness. Below is a cropping of the longer piece. It looks at how Muslim populations in different countries feel about the importance of their religion in their daily life.
Mexico has some serious problems. Primarily with the drug cartels. About two weeks ago the National Post created an infographic that looked at the northern spread of Mexican drugs into the United States. The infographic also included details on the transit and transportation networks the different drugs take along with the geographic spread of the various cartels from the Tijuana, Federation, Juarez, and Gulf Cartels as reported by US cities.
Foreign Policy magazine rates countries as to how close they may or may not be to becoming failed states. Mexico is among those that have fallen into the “Warning” category over the recent years. The second half of the infographic looks at why. In short, in the past few years over 50,000 people have been killed in drug-related homicides and several more thousand have simply disappeared. The police, military, civilian officials, journalists, &c. have become targets of the cartel if they oppose the cartels.
Mexico has some serious problems. Sadly problems have a tendency to spill over borders.
Credit for the piece goes to Jonathan Rivait and Richard Johnson.
A lot of people’s minds may be on the Olympics that open up today in London. However, a very important story that was covered a little while ago deserves a post.
The United States has been suffering from a severe drought across much of the country. Droughts are nothing new, though climate change is likely to increase their intensity in the coming decades. This means more than lawns with dead grass; it means crop failures. Crop failures mean lack of food for humans and cattle. That means lower supply while demand holds steady. That means increasing prices. That means increasing pressure on already straining household budgets. Ergo, severe droughts can be a big deal.
The New York Times charted the geographic spread of droughts over the past century as small multiples. The print version was different, alas I have no photo, but the online version neatly groups maps by decade. Of some interest is how similar the scale of the 2012 coverage is in relation to that of 1934, the year of the Dust Bowl.
Credit for the piece goes to Haeyoun Park and Kevin Quealy
And for the lighter side to end the week, via xkcd:
The Slovakian government has published the results from its 2011 census. The census looked at many things, including nationality and language. This should allow the government in Bratislava to better fund and support the ethnic minorities in Slovakia.
Of course, some of my ancestors were one of the small ethnic minorities in Slovakia. Ergo, I have a personal interest in the data. The result is a quick infographic about the Carpatho-Rusyns of Slovakia. Click on the cropping below to learn more, meaning, see a bigger and fuller version.
Credit for the work goes to me. For the data, the statistics office of Slovakia.
The National Post’s business section, branded separately as the Financial Post, posted a comment about a proposed bridge that would span the Detroit River and add a third major crossing to the Detroit–Windsor area. The comment used a graphic to explain one of the key points of the story, that early 21st century traffic projections haven proven to be very much incorrect. Unfortunately, it took me a little bit of time to realise that in the graphic.
So without access to the raw data provided by United Research Services I have made a quick attempt to improve the graphic within the confines of Coffee Spoons’ main column space, i.e. 600 pixels. The original locator map is quite useful and therefore not included in my effort.
My main issues with the charts are the separation of the estimates from the actuals and the spacing between the estimates. I would have preferred to have seen, as in my example, how the actuals for 2010 fell far short of the 2004 projections. Ideally, I would have liked to have seen the original estimates for the intervening years between 2010, ’20, and ’30, however that data was not provided in the comment if it is even available from the original source. Consequently, unlike the original, I have kept the spacing of the actual data in the estimates with the intervening gaps.
The subtle effect of this increased spacing is to reduce the visual speed, if one will, of the projected growth. Over the original and narrower space the rate of increase appears fairly dramatic. However when given the correct spacing the ‘time’ to reach the projections lengthens and thus the rate ‘slows down’.
Credit for the original piece goes to Richard Johnson. The reinterpretation and any errors therein are entirely my own.
So my prediction of the health care law being thrown out did not come to pass. But what will pass is the space probe Voyager 1 out of the solar system in the very near future. (Don’t worry unlike Voyager, I will return—albeit to the original subject matter next week.) So from the National Post we have an infographic that details just what is Voyager 1. (And no, it is not V’ger, that was the fictional Voyager 6.)
Credit for the piece goes to Joshua Rapp Learn, Andrew Barr, and Richard Johnson.
